


Devotement

by Anonymous033



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, Mentions of Ritualistic Suicidal Thought
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 04:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3881470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous033/pseuds/Anonymous033
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You walked in as I was about to be wed to another—a man, no less.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devotement

**Author's Note:**

> Post-3x22 "This Is Your Sword." Less so of a speculation fic; more so of simply wanting a scene where Nyssa and Sara reunite during that episode.

The woman before her flinches at the click of the door falling shut.

It sends a pang through Sara, because Nyssa has never before flinched in her presence—in _anyone’s_ presence, for that matter—and it’s just another sign of how messed up things had gotten before she showed up. She crawls onto the bed; the soft cotton of the embroidered duvet gives way under her knees as she shuffles towards Nyssa and reaches out a hand.

Nyssa visibly recoils.

Sara, with her arm still extended, feels her heart sink to her stomach. “Is it the come-back-to-life thing?” she asks quietly. “Is it too weird for you?”

Hesitant eyes lift, but don’t quite meet hers. “It could never be that,” Nyssa answers just as quietly.

“Then what is it?”

The tormented gaze falls away once more. Sara tracks the progress of a single tear, glinting under the light of a nearby candle, as it slips down fragile, porcelain skin.

“You walked in as I was about to be wed to another—a man, no less.”

“I know,” Sara answers. “I saw. You didn’t fight, Nyssa—not while we were fighting. You always fight.”

“Perhaps I would rather have died in that moment.”

The words are soft and tinged with regret, but all the same, they feel like a stab to Sara’s gut. “Is seeing me again really that bad?”

“I dishonoured you!” Nyssa cries, the exclamation piercing suddenly through the night air. “I had resigned myself to a life of disgrace before your miraculous return, but when you came through those doors—I wished you had been the one to put a sword through me. I am unworthy of speaking to you.”

“Nyssa, what—” Sara croaks, her throat dry, “ _What are you talking about?_ ”

“You saw me … with another,” Nyssa replies shamefully. There is no hiding the tremble of her lower lip. “If I were to bind myself to someone, it _had_ to be you.”

“Nyssa—”

“To have it be any other would have been a betrayal to you even in your death, but that you should have had to suffer the _indignity_ of _witnessing_ my disgraceful act—”

“Nyssa, it’s not your fault!”

“When I still dared call you my Beloved,” Nyssa presses on, her voice cracking, “I meant it with _every fibre of my soul;_ but I failed to keep, even for a year after your passing, your name untarnished.”

“ _Nyssa!_ ”

Nyssa falls silent.

It’s a little twisted, Sara thinks, that Nyssa responds better to her commands than to any other tone she could use. The Nyssa prior to Sara’s ‘death’—the feisty, indomitable one—would claim to the contrary, but it’s true: At her core, Nyssa has been a soldier from birth. She is well-versed in the language of discipline and instruction, but not in the language of compassion and gentleness; harsh words just get through to her in a manner that kind words sometimes can’t.

But that same woman now sits hunched over, the weight of the world breaking her back; anguish is carved deep into every line of her beautiful face, and even if Sara can’t _begin_ to understand how Nyssa could possibly take on the responsibility of others’ actions, she knows the hurting must end.

Carefully, Sara reaches out to cup the other woman’s face.

Nyssa’s eyes glimmer furiously, but she allows Sara to lean closer and brush a kiss across her forehead.

“ _Ana usaamihki,_ ” Sara whispers as she draws away and clasps Nyssa’s hands. “I forgive you. For whatever wrongs you think you’ve done, _I forgive you—_ and I need you to forgive yourself.”

Nyssa’s words catch against the broken cadence of her breathing as she grits them out. “I don’t deserve this forgiveness.”

“My forgiveness is _mine_ to give,” Sara returns fiercely. “I’m giving it to you. You forgave me when I came back to the League after I left—don’t you think you should get the same courtesy?”

“You’re from another world,” Nyssa replies. “I understood you, but that doesn’t mean I should imitate you. My virtue lies in my loyalty, Sara—”

“And I love you not because you’re _loyal to me._ ”

Nyssa stops short, her lips still parted, almost as if Sara has stolen the words from her mid-sentence.

“I love you because you’re smart and caring and have _so much capacity for goodness inside of you,_ ” Sara presses on. “All the things Ra’s told you never to have—all the things he punished you for having. But you know what? Ra’s is dead now. _I’m_ still alive, and _I’m_ telling you that all these things you pretend don’t matter to you and aren’t eating you up inside are a part of you, and I love you for being _you,_ not for being who you think you have a duty to act as.

“So please,” she adds more softly when Nyssa stares at her with wide eyes, “please forgive yourself. I need you to forgive yourself because I know that if I walked out those doors right now and left you thinking you ruined my reputation, I’ll never see you again.”

“Are you leaving?” Nyssa questions thickly.

“How could you even ask that?” Sara parries. “Do you think I would walk away from you when you need me?”

Nyssa opens her mouth, but Sara presses her fingers over Nyssa’s mouth before the latter can speak.

“I know you,” Sara says, her own voice quavering now too. “You’re gonna tell me I should or must or _whatever._ Well, I’m gonna tell you that _I don’t fucking care._ I’m staying, and I’m staying until you put that sword I noticed in the corner away. And maybe I’ll stay even then. I’ll stay till you know that it’s okay—that I forgive you and that I love you and that I want you to live.”

“I—”

“—just want to honour me,” Sara interrupts. “I know that. But I don’t give a shit about honour. I give a shit about _you,_ and I want you to be okay.”

The expression of distaste on Nyssa’s face would be comical under any other circumstance. Nyssa never liked it when Sara swore: She thought it was ‘uncouth.’ Yet Sara’s casualness, for some reason, has always relaxed Nyssa—Sara notices now that Nyssa’s shoulders loosen a little.

“If it would please you…” Nyssa starts, and Sara wants to protest, _No, Nyssa, don’t do it for me—do it for yourself._

But thirty years of subservient thinking can’t be undone within a single day, so Sara settles for simply nodding. “It would please me.”

Nyssa inclines her head. “Then it shall not be done.”

Just like that.

Ignoring the tears that well up inside of her, Sara reaches out for Nyssa once again. The latter comes willingly—if haltingly—this time; having Sara’s arms around Nyssa as they sit facing each other makes for a very awkward angle, but neither of them complain.

“I love you so, so much,” Sara promises Nyssa—and if she feels dampness on her skin where Nyssa’s face is hidden in the curve of her neck, she doesn’t mention it. “I’m glad I don’t have to mourn over you right now.”

The noise that escapes Nyssa’s lips is both a sob and an almost hysterical laugh. “How perverse of you to liken us to the childish whims of Montague and Capulet,” Nyssa says irrelevantly, and god—

“You’re insane, you know that?” Sara chides Nyssa.

The atmosphere falls away again at her words.

Nyssa pulls back to meet Sara’s gaze. “Yet you love me,” she says, but there’s a rising lilt to the end of her sentence like in question instead of in statement.

So, Sara nods and concurs with solemnity, “I do.”

Nyssa’s lips twitch for a moment, less so as if she’s about to laugh and more so as if she’s holding something back. Sara runs the back of her fingers along the underside of Nyssa’s jaw, revelling in the way Nyssa presses into her touch. She tells Nyssa, “You can say it, _habibti._ ”

And then Nyssa takes a deep breath and tells her, “I love you, too.”

* * *

Crossposted to: [Tumblr](http://anonymous033.tumblr.com/post/118191562637/devotement-a-nysara-nyssara-one-shot-preemptive)


End file.
